The political activity and voting behavior of 136 young German adults in 1994 were predicted by their political action orientations measured 7 years before. Respondents belonging to cohorts born in 1971Respondents belonging to cohorts born in , 1972Respondents belonging to cohorts born in , and 1973Respondents belonging to cohorts born in were surveyed in 1987Respondents belonging to cohorts born in , 1988Respondents belonging to cohorts born in , and 1994. The questionnaires measured variables relevant to the social-cognitive action theory model of personality: self-concept of political competence, beliefs about political locus of control, political knowledge, trust in politics, satisfaction with politics, and political activity in everyday life. The results are interpreted with respect to the correlative and absolute stability versus plasticity of the variables from 1987 to 1994, as well as the predictive value of the action theory personality variables for political activities and for voting behavior measured 7 years later. Longitudinal results indicate a high predictive value of self-concept of political competence and political knowledge for political activity and voting in early adulthood. Because only these two personality variables showed relatively high positional stability coefficients from adolescence to early adulthood, the discussion refers to the necessity of early developmental interventions to prevent extreme types of politically uninterested and passive adults. Therefore, the social-cognitive action theory personality model of political participation is extended to a social-cognitive action theory personality model of political socialization in the life span.

An analysis of the effects of three kinds of teacher comment (social-comparison, subject-matter, and intraindividuaUy oriented) accompanying grades in mathematics is presented. Subjects wen; 385 students from Grades 6 through 10 who were randomly assigned to one of three groups, each receiving one of the three types of comment, or to a control group. During the first half of the school year, teachers wrote comments concerning students' performance on mathematics examinations; during the second half, comments were not made so as to test the duration of effects resulting from the earlier comments. Students were observed at the beginning of the experiment, at the end of the treatment period, after the no-comment phase, and every time they received a grade in mathematics. Dependent variables (besides later performance in mathematics) were cognitive-motivational variables and some school-related personality characteristics, which were selected with reference to a differentiated expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation. In analyses of variance, an interaction between type of comment and the student's prior performance level was revealed for almost all dependent variables. Effects of comments persisted after the experimental period for school-related personality variables only (some aspects of scopespecific locus of control and test anxiety). Implications for teaching strategies as well as for developmental and educational psychology are suggested.

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Three experiments were conducted to investigate dual-code theory and the levels-of-processing approach in discourse processing. Three concrete and three abstract tests were constructed to be equivalent in the degree to which they were perceived as concrete vs. abstract. All experiments presented concrete and abstract texts under three orienting tasks. Results of the first experiment showed main effects for both text concreteness and orienting tasks and an interaction that can be described by the lack of a difference between the recall rates for the concrete and the abstract texts under the intentional-learning condition. In the second experiment, longer texts were used and a second trial was introduced. The interaction was not replicated. There were main effects for concreteness, orienting tasks, and trials. The third experiment replicated Experiment 2 with subjects in their late 40s and over 70. Main effects were obtained as before. Age interacted with both orienting task and concreteness, indicating that older adults gain less than middle-aged adults from intentional-learning instructions and benefit less from highly concrete texts. The discussion focuses on the relation of Materials and Subjects as factors to dual-code theory and levels of processing approach.